The Normal Public Library moved back into its fully renovated space last summer—enough time for Library Director John Fischer to assess how it's going.
Attendance is bouncing back after 16 months of construction, and now that they're settled, the library is embarking on a yearslong effort to become certified through the Sustainable Libraries Initiative.
Fischer said comments on the new facilities have been overwhelmingly positive.
“Almost more important than that is, for me, I walk the space every day that I work and several times a day I just enjoy seeing the community using the spaces,” Fischer said in an interview for WGLT’s Sound Ideas.
“We have study areas, as you can imagine, shelving to browse all of the titles you’re looking for, places to lounge—to see the community in that space and using our spaces means a lot to me. And what I’m seeing and hearing is other community members and staff seeing the same thing.”
Fischer said the former bank building across the street from the College Avenue library that acted as a satellite location during the renovations was “quaint” and served their purposes quite well.
“People, I think, will have fond memories of that space and how we had a drive through, which folks will miss,” Fischer said.
But the miniscule-by-comparison footprint meant holding most activities and book clubs off-site and limited the type of gathering a library is designed to encourage.
“It’s difficult for me to recall what our attendance was like in the temporary branch, but already we’re seeing numbers that are exceeding the hundreds every day,” said Fischer.
That’s getting closer to pre-pandemic levels, when Normal Public Library could easily see 1,000 a day come through the doors.
“We’re not there yet, but I think we’re approaching 500, 600, 700 people a day, depending on what’s going on.”
Sustainable Libraries Initiative
The roughly $7 million included many structural, environmental and efficiency improvements, in addition to redesigned spaces with an updated aesthetic. Those include asbestos abatement and upgraded LED lighting, improved insulation and additional HVAC and electrical improvements.
That will give them a head start on NPL’s push to pursue a certification with the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, which helps affirm the library’s solidarity with the Town of Normal’s Vision 2050 sustainability plan.
“Primarily and most importantly, we had a staff development day in 2024 and staff said, ‘What about sustainability? What are we doing to be sustainable?' Having staff comment like that and engage with how we operate to such a degree is refreshing and nice,” Fischer said. “I welcome that. That conversation grew to, what’s out there?”
Fischer said the certification program offers the library a road map to pursue sustainability through a comprehensive lens, taking about 18- to 24-months to complete. It encompasses energy use; how the library manages purchasing, waste and recycling; transportation; land and water use; community engagement; social cohesion; community resilience; financial sustainability and collections. Just 100 North American libraries have pursued the designation. Fischer said NPL is not the first Illinois library to start the initiative, but he considers the library “on the front lines” of sustainability.
“For us, it’s not so much being first in line as being an example,” he said. “For years, the library has practiced sustainability in many ways. I mean, we’re borrowing materials. We buy two copies of a Stephen King novel and hundreds of people in the community can read it. Besides that, we can share it with other libraries in the state.
“Being good stewards of our resources has always been, I think, in our nature. So, we just wanted to amplify that.”
Fischer said it’s still too early in the process to imagine a tangible return on the investment. Mostly, they want to show it can be done by a relatively small organization.
“I think one of the goals is to be a local resource and an example of a community organization that can achieve this,” he said.
Digital Library Protection Act
Fischer attended a hearing last week in Springfield, advocating for the Digital Library Protection Act, which is aimed at reducing price gouging for digital titles purchased by libraries to lend out.
Unlike physical books, digital media owned by libraries also cannot be borrowed through the state’s interlibrary loan system. And digital licenses must be renewed after a set number of checkouts [sometimes as few as 26] or a set time period, making electronic media prohibitively expensive for many libraries.
Fischer said those are the biggest things the proposed legislation is trying to address.
“We have this contrast between the cost for a physical book and a digital item—the same title,” he said. “Typically, it’s a three- to four-times higher cost for those items. The other piece to that is that the physical item can truly circulate and check out hundreds, if not thousands of times before it falls apart and we replace it. The problem with the e-book is that publishers don’t let us circulate them that number of times.”
That’s the reason the average title on Libby has wait lists sometimes as long as six or eight months. And for some readers, like seniors and people and disabilities, digital media accessed from home are the best or only ways for them to use the library.
Democratic state Rep. Sharon Chung from Bloomington is a co-sponsor on that bill, which passed out of committee and will be introduced in the House next week.
